Chapter Nine - Dungeon Dive

Chapter Nine - Dungeon Dive

Bing Bong! Congratulations, your Cinnamon Bun class has reached level 2!

Health + 5

Resilience +5

You have gained: One Class Point

You have unlocked: One Class Skill Slot

A skill slot? I wondered aloud even as a rush of giddiness washed through me. It was like a faint tingling, first in my skin, then my muscles and the insides of my chest, as if someone had placed me in a microwave on high for a few seconds, but without the exploding.

I grinned. I was level two!

Normally, that would have been a time of celebration and dancing and such, but I was right next to a giant evil hole in the ground and it kind of felt unwise to make lots of noise while so close to the scary pit.

Instead, I looked around, took in the bright sunlight streaming down on the sight of the battlefield where I had fought the wraith and soaked in the sun.

The hole didnt drop straight down, not for more than a meter and a half or so. The passage went on into the dark as some sort of tunnel that I couldnt see the end of. I was going to need a ladder or else getting out of there would be complicated.

Fortunately, I had seen one next to the gardening shed of one of the houses Id explored. Unfortunately it was all the way across town.

There werent any other options, so I took a leisurely stroll across town, found the ladder where it had been left, tested the rungs a few times to make sure they could hold my weight, then dragged it all the way back.

The moment my foot touched the ground within the hole a prompt appeared before me.

You are Entering the Wonderland Dungeon

Dungeon Level 2-4

Your entire party has entered the DungeonGét latest novel chapters on nov(e)lbj/n(.)c/om

Seal Dungeon until exit?

That sounds like an awful idea, I said.

Dungeon left Unsealed

Any Person can Enter Dungeon Instance

Any Person can Exit Dungeon Instance

Quest Updated!

The Hole Down Under

An evil root has plunged into the world.

You have entered the Wonderland Dungeon. Explore it. Find the root. Destroy it.

I let out a breath I didnt know I was holding and counted myself lucky. It felt as if I had dodged a bullet there. Still, level two to four monsters would probably be really tricky to fight. But maybe I didnt need to fight them?

Dropping my backpack, I searched within until I found the silvery candlestick I had looted and a fresh candle. Then I lost a minute or two with the firestarter until the candle lit up with a spark. I replaced the firestarter and stood back up, the candle holder held before me so that the mirror shield it had illuminated the path ahead.

The passage was like a borehole, the walls smooth dirt except where the occasional root poked through and the ground tilted down at a slight angle. I tread carefully, always watching where I set my feet in case of traps or pitfalls or anything of the sort. I had read enough about dungeons to know that being careful was the best way to survive them.

I stared down at my hands, my perfectly clean hands, made that way thanks to some magic and not any effort of my own. Hands that I felt should have been at least a little dirty.

I wasnt some crusader, or the person who got to decide what was right and wrong. I had been asked, by something, to come rid the world of something evil, and thats what I was trying to do, but I didnt want to compromise my morality to do it.

My hands clenched into fists. So I wont, I decided. I had made friends with all sorts of people already. And maybe I could make even more in this dungeon. Maybe it was an evil place and I couldnt. I didnt know yet, but I would learn and I would ask the people I met to be friends first before I ever raised a fist against them.

I nodded. Right! My choice was... not made, because that had been my path already, but reaffirmed.

Jumping

Rank F - 00%

The ability to jump. As this skill rises in level your ability to jump will improve!

A glance at my new skill didnt reveal all that much. It wasnt... well, it wasnt Fireball. Jumping could be useful... maybe? For getting to high places?

My skills are really lame, I whined.

Still, it was a skill, and at rank F it wasnt that handy. I skipped over to the door, then looked at the experience change. It had gone up a full percent. Maybe I could grind it here before moving on, then. I had another skill that was nearly at the next level too.

The door to the next area had a large lock on it. It didnt take a genius to see that it was the key that had dropped from the rabbit. Next to the door was a little table with a potion bottle and a cake on it. The cake had EAT ME written on it in big letters, the bottle had a small tag with DRINK THIS scribbled on it. I fired off two quick Insights.

Is that... is that an Alice in Wonderland reference? I asked aloud. Insight.

A poisoned cake

A poisoned shrinking potion

I eyed the cake and the potion, then carefully took the potion and brought it back to my backpack to tuck it away. There was a chance it would come in handy later. Then I checked my notifications.

Congratulations! Through repeated actions your Insight skill has improved and is now eligible for rank up!

Rank D is a free rank!

That was an easy choice to make.

Insight

Rank D - 00%

The Ability to know something. The knowledge you gain is further increased.

I stretched, jumped on the spot a few times, then looked to the door as I slid my backpack back on. I didnt know how ready I was to face off the rest of the dungeon, but I wouldnt learn that until I tried. I got my makeshift flail ready, just in case I ran into more zombies or ghosts, then unlocked the door to step out into the rest of the dungeon.

My breath caught.

The passageway continued for a few feet, then opened up onto a railless balcony overlooking a large hole. It was maybe ten or twenty meters wide, with an opened top that revealed the bright green sky above. There were other platforms at different levels, with huge, bulbous mushrooms growing in a spiraling ring all around the sides of the shaft. It seemed as if the level I was on was the highest one around.

It was pretty, with glowing moss along the walls, little trees sticking out here and there with huge caterpillars on them and pretty pink clouds floating above. Pretty, surreal, and nothing like the world I had left when I entered the dungeon.

Whoa, I said as I moved to the edge of the ledge and looked down. Every quarter turn of the shaft had a hole drilled into the wall, some with elaborate arches, others quite plain. All the way down to the bottom where a field of grass was waiting and a large vine-covered archway. It would have looked idyllic if the pervasive sense of wrong wasnt so strong whenever I looked at the tunnel behind that arch.

That had to be my objective then.

And the only way to reach it was to jump from mushroom to mushroom. Maybe Jumping wasnt a waste of skill after all.